


the jacket club guide to clown town

by the_hemlocked



Category: Original Work
Genre: Child Death, Conspiracy, Gen, Horror, Humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 05:31:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17543624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_hemlocked/pseuds/the_hemlocked
Summary: Jordan Jordan was twelve years old, and therefore he was in charge. Not to mention, he had been in Scouts ever since kindergarten, and he was the only kid Peewee knew that had a Super Soaker full of holy water. If anyone would know what to do, it would be Jordan Jordan of 56 North Avenue, the kid with the thick glasses and serious scowl and windswept black hair and bright pink  bunny ear headband.Or: a band of middle-schoolers save the world and stuff.





	the jacket club guide to clown town

> In the end, all ghost stories are about going home.

\---

By the time the police made it to Winona’s house, half of the neighborhood had too. Gunther pulled the car onto the driveway, then shooed away most of the hoighty-toighty nose-blowers who couldn’t mind their own business. Even the brats from down the street had the decency to shuffle off, although he was sure they would have stayed, had these past few weeks of summer not been so hot and horrible. He and Leonard closed the area off, stopped foot-traffic from making a mess over the scene of the crime, and did their job.

Gunther had been doing his job for a long time then, but that didn’t mean it got easier. 

“Ms. Wyatt?” Leonard called out. 

Winona was sitting on the front porch, her brown hair frazzled and her hands pushed deep into the soft flesh of her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut and sobbed. The sun hadn’t set just yet, and the residents of the town sat and waited for news in a warm, glowing orange haze. Under a peach sky, they peered out of windows and quietly edged along the police tape, while the sound of cicadas harmonized with Winona’s weeping. 

He nodded to Lonard, who sat down on the porch steps with her. Taking a deep breath, Gunther pushed his way into the house. Not much had changed since the last time he had been there. The carpet was still a shaggy gray color, the kitchen still in disarray, the rafters still exposed where the staircase to the second floor met the ceiling of the living room. He figured the renovations would never be finished by this point. Upstairs, the bathroom was meticulously clean, aside from the bathtub itself which had a grimy sheen to it, and the bedroom doors were all shut. He searched them briefly, but on the third door, he paused. This was the one that had belonged to Alyssa, and for some time it had remained locked. 

He reached, standing on his toes, to the top of the doorframe and pulled down the master key from where it had been perched. He sighed through his nose as his fist closed around the familiar metal. Alyssa’s door unlocked with a small  _ click,  _ and he entered. The inside of her room was the same as it had been when he was at the house about three months ago, and it was the same as two months before that, when he had been invited to dinner by Mr. Wyatt. It was a perfect flash-frozen memory, down to the same bedsheets, a dark rusting brown in certain spots. Alyssa’s toys were put away, although her coloring book laid open on the table. All of the pictures — Alyssa in a ballerina’s outfit, Alyssa wearing a pageant dress, Alyssa at a dance recital — remained on the wall. “Goddamn,” he muttered to himself, but at the absence of anyone in the room, he made his way back downstairs. 

The Wyatt house was an old routine. 

He made his way outside, shaking his head when Leonard looked up. 

“Ms. Wyatt,” Gunther said, carefully. He cleared his throat. “Where is Timothy?”

“I told you,” she cried. “I  _ told  _ you. He floated away. He just floated away.” 

Leonard gave Gunther a very sad look. 

\---

So, yeah, ghost stories are about going home. Restless souls that were killed in war, the grieving mother and her children, the tortured and the suffering — they roam and moan and ache to be somewhere familiar. They don’t mean anyone harm, not usually. But when you’ve been stuck alone where no one can hear you and no one can see you and no one can help you, something in you shatters, and the edges are sharp. Ghost stories are not so much scary as they are sad. 

This one is no different. 


End file.
